1. Field
The present application relates to a shredder for shredding items, such as, but not limited to papers, credit cards, compact discs (CD's), digital video discs (DVD's) and various types of junk mail.
2. Discussion of Related Art
There is an increasing demand for shredding documents such as those that contain any personal or confidential information. Identity theft is a growing problem and people are becoming more concerned with limiting the general availability and access to this type of information to others.
Various types of shredders, commonly referred to as paper shredders, are currently on the market to shred these documents. People routinely shred documents such as financial statements, medical records, credit cards and employee files. Shredding documents is also a common practice in certain legal and government circumstances. Other items, such as credit card applications and junk mail, are also shred rather than just thrown in the trash to further protect against identity theft.
Shredders are often used to render paper documents unreadable by cutting the document into smaller strips or bits of paper. This is typically accomplished by passing the paper through a mesh that lies between a pair of opposed, rotating cutters. An edge of the paper is initially fed into the mesh, which then begins to shred and pull the paper forward. The mesh reduces the document to the smaller bits or strips of paper, or “shredded material”, which is typically received and collected in a shredder receptacle.
Shredded material is often of a lesser density than unshredded material. Consequently, the volume of shredded material received in the receptacle of a shredder is typically greater than that of the documents that produced the shredded material. This increase in volume can create a need to dispose of shredded material more frequently than might otherwise be necessary for unshredded material.
Shredders typically include a slot-like paper inlet that receives and directs paper to the mesh that lies between the opposed cutters, where the documents are shredded. To accommodate documents of varying widths, the inlets are typically made as wide as, or wider than the largest document that is to be accepted by the paper shredder. This, in turn, has required the paper shredders to have a width that is greater than the inlet slot.
Conventional shredders often require a user to carefully insert paper with a leading edge oriented squarely to the mesh of the opposed cutters. Otherwise, the paper may be pulled into the mesh diagonally, which can cause a lateral edge of the paper to contact a side of the paper inlet as the paper progresses toward the mesh. This contact may cause the shredder to become jammed, or the paper to be incompletely shredded.